Shill Bidding

[great1]

Today I won an auction that I am 95% sure there was some shill bidding going on by the seller. I placed my bid with about 20 minutes to go as I was busy doing something and didn't want to miss out, it was only about $5 more then the previous highest bid and put me in the lead. Later I checked my email and see 3 emails, one said I was outbid, another said bid retraction notice and the third said I won the auction. I checked the auction page and after the retracted bid there was another bid which was 1 cent lower then my maximum bid. The seller has the bidders listings as private so I can't see the % of bids the user has with the seller or the retractions.

Does anyone have any advise or something similar happen to them? I don't want to pay for this after the seller squeezing every last cent out of me and I don't want bad feedback. I have already filled a shill bidding report with ebay.

[30ranfordfan]

That does sound pretty sketchy. Most the alleged shill bid reports I read here..... I think people are upset becuase they paid more than they want to.

I would be very concerned about that though. Probably did the right thing, and reported it to eBay.

[MasonRaymond0320]

Smells fishy. Good job reporting that to ebay.

[beessports0708]

i thought buyers cant get negative feedbacks?

[30ranfordfan]

That's correct. Buyers can't get bad feedback.

Sellers can file a non-paying thingy though. I think you get 3, and you're out.

i thought buyers cant get negative feedbacks?

[Ray33]

Is that even possible? You can't retract your bids within 12 hours of the auction end.

[PensFan_87]

Is that even possible? You can't retract your bids within 12 hours of the auction end.

but the seller can do a bid retraction thing though. I made a mistake on bidding on something (bid 1000 instead of 10.00) and the seller canceled it.

[Pata93]

Is that even possible? You can't retract your bids within 12 hours of the auction end.

You can retract a bid you placed one hour before the auction end.

[great1]

Is that even possible? You can't retract your bids within 12 hours of the auction end.

This is what it says on ebay's site when less then 12 hours remains, You can retract a bid within one hour of placing it. In this case, only that bid will be retracted; any other bid you placed before the last 12 hours of the listing remains valid.

[RGM81]

That certainly sounds fishy - the key to detecting a shill bidder is the amount that they put as their max. Most people will bid an even dollar amount, so if you see a guy continually bidding xx.99 as his max, that should set off red flags. It's happened to me before and I wasn't too thrilled. Yes it was within the maximum amount that I was willing to pay, but when there are no legitimate bidders trying to actually win the item it's still repugnant that I have to pay $25 when the only other legit bidders dropped off at $10 and the shiller went all the way up to $24.99.